The Runner (20 page)

Tommy laughed over Cheryl's exasperated, “Deadhead.”

“I am, we all are, aren't we? At least we're doing something, not just sitting around letting them steamroll us. Wait'll you see it, Bullet, it's called ‘A Buried Incident.' About that black guy getting beat up. You gotta read it.”

Bullet ate away at his sandwiches.

“Seriously, I really want you to read it. You'll like it—because whether you know it or not, you're on our side.”

“He's not on anyone's side except his own,” Cheryl said.

Tommy and Lou shook their heads, disagreeing. Bullet didn't bother responding. He didn't mind if Cheryl was right, for a change; it was no skin off his nose.

*   *   *

That afternoon he started looking at Tamer's technique. He watched him practice the hurdles and even ran one round against him. Bullet lost time over the jumps, but made it up on the runs between. As he went around the track, he no longer lost as much time and he made up even more, so that he came in well ahead at the end. “What're you trying to prove, Tillerman?” Tamer demanded.

That gets through to you, does it?
Bullet wasn't pleased or displeased by the guy's anger, just interested. “Nothing, Shipp,” he answered, moving on to put in a few high jumps, so the coach wouldn't get on his back. Tamer watched him go but didn't have anything to say about it. After practice, Bullet told him, “You're making some mistakes when you run. In technique.”

The dark eyes stared at him, hostile. Not his problem.

“You lean too far forward,” Bullet said. “You got to keep your back straighter—give your lungs a chance. And
use
your arms. You let them too loose, you know?”

“No, I don't know.”

“Look, if you pump with your arms, like this—not too much, just enough—you can set your own pace up. And your knees, get them higher. You're okay with that but you could do better.”

The guy just stood there, staring out from under his heavy eyebrows.

“What makes you the expert, Tillerman?”

Bullet shrugged. It made no difference to him. “Nothing. Shipp.”

“And don't call me that.”

“What, Shipp? It's your name.”

“It's my old man's name.”

“Same thing.”

“No, it isn't. Not at all the same. He died bad,” Tamer said.

Bullet almost laughed, and he went ahead and said what he was thinking: “And my old man lives bad. Big deal. Tough luck.”

The dark face glowered at him. “I don't even want to understand you, Whitey. But I guess I better try it your way, although I don't know why I should. You're no expert and I do okay my own way. But I'll try.” He went around the track, slowly. Bullet could see him reminding himself to get his back straighter, get his arms working for him. Bullet watched, not thinking about anything. Tamer went around the track again, faster this time, but not at his best speed.
Looks right,
Bullet thought. “Looks right,” he called, as Tamer started off on a third round.

Coming off the track at the end of that lap, Tamer reported, “It feels right too, I am sorry to say. I can't do much about the knees, I don't think.”

Bullet didn't much care. “What do I call you then?” he asked.

“You don't have to call me anything. But my name's Tamer.”

The names coloreds give their kids,
Bullet thought.

“Spit it out,” Tamer told him.

“What kind of a name's that?” Bullet said.

Unexpectedly, the guy grinned. “You're asking me that? You—Bullet. Bul-let,” Tamer said, “and you're asking
me
? You whites are something else.”

So what,
Bullet thought, angry. Then the humor of it struck him, and he looked over Tamer's shoulder to the track, to keep himself from smiling. “Okay,” he said, looking back at the dark
face, “I see what you mean. But I named myself, when I was a kid. I chose my own name.”

“My mother was hoping I'd be tamer than my brothers, or at least that's what she told me.”

“Yeah? Did it work?”

“Not according to her. But I am civilized, a civilized man. What's your real name?”

“Bullet,” Bullet told him. “They named me Samuel.”

“After the prophet in the Bible?” Bullet had no idea. “Man, do parents ever not know, yeah?” Tamer remarked. “They just dream all over their kids. All that wishing and hoping—it's really sad if you think about it.”

Bullet never thought about it.

“And I'm as guilty as the next man,” Tamer said.

“Hunh?”

“You didn't know? That's right, I forgot—information doesn't cross the color barrier. I've got a kid, a baby girl.”

“Why'd you do that?” Bullet demanded.

Tamer laughed. He laughed so hard he had to lean against a tree to stay standing up. “The usual reason,” he choked out. “Don't get pissed, I know what you meant—but you heard how it sounded. C'mon, Bullet, no need to feel ashamed, nobody heard you but me, just some black guy. And it's funny,” he laughed.

Bullet had to admit it was.

“But I'm not about to let you know what we named her, un-unh,” Tamer said. “Because then you
would
laugh. And I'll answer the question, yes, I'm married—well, it was my fault as well as hers, and yes it cost me the year of school. Whitey wasn't getting me onto welfare.”

“Most coloreds don't feel that way,” Bullet said.

“Blacks,” Tamer said. “And you don't know from nothing about it, Whitey.”

The next afternoon an icy rain drizzled down from the low clouds, so the coach cut practice short. Bullet and Tamer stayed behind to practice. Three of the other runners, all white, stayed behind too. “Hey, Bullet, the coach said we should see if you'd give us some tips,” their spokesman said. “Would you?” They were sure of his answer, they were ready to do what he said.

“No,” Bullet said.
Not worth my time.

“Hunh?” Surprise stopped them. “Why not?”

Bullet didn't say anything.

“What's so special about him?”

Bullet didn't say anything. He'd never thought about it, except he wasn't wasting his time with Tamer. And he knew these three.

“What is it, you turning into a nigger lover? Inte-
gra
-tionist liberal?”

“Black,” Tamer corrected patiently.

“No,” Bullet said.

“Shipp?” they asked Tamer.

Nothing to do with him.
What were they trying?
Nobody can make me.

“You asking me to put pressure on him? On
him
? You're asking a nigger for help? You're in a bad way, Whitey. A bad way.”

“How come he'll work with you and not us?”

“Damn-all if I know,” Tamer said. “Who knows why he does anything. But I can tell you, it's no picnic. So if I were you, I'd tell the coach you don't want to anymore. Think about it before you fly off the handle. We're doing better, aren't we? If you want to get a shot at the state championships, you can't afford to have Bullet off the team again, can you?”

“Okay,” they muttered. “Yeah. Okay. I didn't want to do this anyway, did you? Work with that bastard?”

They went off to the showers and Tamer turned to Bullet. “They had me scared for a minute. There's only so much integration I plan to tolerate.”

“They didn't scare me,” Bullet said. “Doesn't it burn you?”

“Them?” Tamer asked. “Are you kidding? Besides, you were burned enough to cover the situation for both of us and have some left over.” He started off around the cross-country trail, taking it a little slow to keep his back straight, to get his arms working and his legs in sync. Bullet stayed at the track, going over the hurdles, concentrating on footwork as he approached each jump. His timing was still off. Once he figured that out, he thought, he'd work on the angle of his following leg as he went over the jumps.
First things first.

A
s they left History class on Thursday morning, Cheryl handed Bullet a copy of the school paper. “Take a look at the editorial,” she told him, then added, “If you can read. This one'll really get them going. I can barely wait to see what they do about it—he's really nailed them on this one.”

Bullet read it at the start of the next class, opening the six-page paper to the editorial page and folding it back before putting it on his desktop.

A Buried Incident

—for Tamer Shipp

They discovered the incident one morning, going to work. There were a few of them who came upon it simultaneously, all of them wearing light gray suits and carrying the rules rolled up in their pockets, sticking out; all of them with polished shoes, their shoelaces tied into neat, manly bows.

The incident looked terrible, lying there on the roadside. It was almost unrecognizable. Was it black? a little black incident? Or was it white, a white one? Or red? Or blue?

Nasty, they knew it was nasty. They took the rules out of their pockets and unrolled them. For a long time they tried to find out what the rules told them to do, because what the rules said wasn't what they wanted to do. Then for a long time they stood, all around, looking down at the disgusting little incident, which
was just lying there. They really wanted to go away and pretend they hadn't seen it, pretend they had gone to work down the other road that morning, or driven by so important and fast they couldn't possibly have noticed.

“What if?” one said. And “What if?” another answered. “What if?” “What if?” So they pushed it out of sight and buried it in the dirt by the wayside, covering it over with leaves. The first thing they did when they got to work was wash their hands. “Phew,” they said. “That was close.” “Phew.”

The buried incident rotted peacefully away, until the children came along. Curious, the way children are, and not knowing any better, they pushed the leaves away and dug around in the dirt, until they could see what it was. “Ugh,” they said. “I don't like it.” “I don't want it.” Some of them vomited. Some of them poked at it with sticks to show how brave and clever they were. Scientific-minded children picked up little pieces of it to take home and study. Bullies threw stones at it. A few girls cried a few tears.

When the men walked past in the evening they could see that the grave had been tampered with. “Where is the dog who has done this?” they demanded in big voices. “Mad dog.” “Animal control.” “Rabies,” they called out.

And the incident rose up, its bones strung together, its half-rotten flesh even harder to identify. The buried incident rose up, crawled out of its grave and waved its arms at them.

Bullet returned the paper to Cheryl as she went into the lunchroom. She looked surprised to have it put back into her hands. “Thanks,” he said. She added it to the pile she was carrying to pass out. As he went by the table where Tommy sat, Bullet stopped to say, “Not bad.”

Tommy smiled happily up at him. “You're just jealous.” He looked pleased with himself. Somebody called Tommy's name and Bullet moved on, to sit with the wimps. He watched the groups by Tommy's table, all during lunch. People, both black and white, came by to say things that made Tommy smile.

*   *   *

That afternoon, Bullet ran a couple of times around the course beside Tamer, keeping his own pace easy but stretching Tamer's. Tamer ran it twice more on his own while Bullet worked over the hurdles. Tamer watched the end of that. “You want some advice?” he offered, as Bullet finished a round.

Bullet shook his head: he was concentrating on trying to feel down his muscles what was wrong; he was getting too much height and not enough forward movement in the jumps.

“Come off it, Tillerman.” Tamer faced him. “Is it that important to you always to be in top position?”

“Hunh?”

“I do know something about hurdling,” Tamer said.

Coloreds, always thinking you were putting them down.

“I won't tell anybody,” Tamer said, sarcastic.

“Can it,” Bullet said, not angry for a wonder. “It doesn't work for me that way. I do it. Until it feels right.”

“Nobody can teach
you
, is that it?”

“Yeah.”
That's it exactly.

The heavy eyebrows lowered.

“You can get steamed if you want to, if you want to take it personally. For the record, though, I don't care what position I'm in. I have never worried myself about that.”

Tamer just stared at him. “I think you're straight,” he finally said.

Of course I am.

“Then what if I ran a few? My technique is pretty good—I had some good coaching before. You want me to do that?”

Bullet nodded. Tamer chuckled, shrugged, loped onto the track and ran the hurdles slowly, easily. Bullet watched his approach to the jumps, how he distanced himself to take off, the forward angle of his torso as he went over it. Bullet could feel that, that leaning forward into the landing. He hadn't been doing
that. Before Tamer finished, he went back to the start.
Get off sooner than you think,
he told himself. He took down a couple of hurdles at the beginning, but he held the picture of Tamer's jumps in his mind and he could feel how that worked.

“Yeah,” he said to the big colored guy.

“You're welcome,” Tamer answered, sarcastic again. “Are you going to be running the hurdles? Frankly, I hope not,” he added.

“Naw,” Bullet told him. “Running on a track—I don't like it. You know?”

“No, I don't. But, as I see it, that's your problem.”